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diff --git a/src/md/28_Pyrotechnic_Adventures.md b/src/md/28_Pyrotechnic_Adventures.md deleted file mode 100644 index 9e5dd86..0000000 --- a/src/md/28_Pyrotechnic_Adventures.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,52 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: Pyrotechnic Adventures ---- - -I guess I never quite grew up. Most young boys love fireworks and -firecrackers. They go through a phase of blowing things up or inventing -ways to use fire and explosives for good fun and excitement. Then they -move on to more serious and less destructive forms of entertainment. I -just never outgrew the phase. - -When I think back of all the crazy stuff we used to do as kids with -various forms of explosives, I marvel that I survived my childhood with -all my eyes and fingers still functional. There were no such things as -terrorists and una-bombers, yet, so it was relatively easy to get a hold -of dangerous chemicals and compounds. There weren\'t so many safety -regulations and liability lawyers in those days. Besides, most parents -were willing to let their children go unsupervised for most of the day. -As long as we checked in occasionally when we got hungry, we could do -just about anything we wanted to without fear of getting in big trouble. - -## Home-made Bullets - -My first memories of dangerous experiments come from the time when our -family lived in the flat roofed house in Vancouver. I was about 11 years -old and the house was located just off St. John\'s Road on the edge of -the city. There were lots of fields and forests, a lake and a train -track. - -Dad always had ammunition in the house, mostly boxes of .22 shells, but -they weren\'t available for us to experiment with. My brother and I got -it into our heads that we could make our own bullets. I had a small -chemistry set that contained the chemicals we needed to make the old -fashioned black-powder that was used by mountain men in their flint-lock -rifles. We mixed potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal together in a -cup. We would then use the metal tube from discarded ball point pens and -remove the ink. We then closed off one end of the tube and filled it up -with gun powder. Finally, we used a rock to pound a shot gun shell -pellet into the open end of the tube. The finished product was -essentially a very crude attempt to make a bullet. We then placed the -small tube in the crack of a telephone pole so the end with the pellet -stuck in it pointed toward some target. Then, with our bare hands, we -held a lit candle under the tube to cause the gun power to ignite. -Usually, we only managed to achieve a little pop. The only thing that -saved us from serious injury was our ignorance about the proper way to -make traditional gun powder. Had we only known how to properly make the -gun powder, it might have been powerful enough to do some serious damage -to exposed hands and faces. In this case, the failure was actually a -blessing. - -This saga will require many more writing sessions. I will describe the -heart-wrenching episodes in following articles. I advise all readers to -be prepared with a large box of industrial-grade Kleenex tissues. |